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stop Saturday deliveries? We have become an on-demand society and expect to have things as soon as we order them. The USPS is one of the World's best postal services. You can have something mailed first class from the West Coast and have it delivered in the East Coast in about three days, top. Try that in Europe where it takes about a week to move mail 500 milesg. Having lived in Europe and having travelled extensively I have found that there are few postal services that match the USPS. It takes a month to receive a postcard from Mexico, The Dominican Republlic, Jamaica. Folks argue that UPS, FedEx, etc, are cheaper and faster, but these are the same carriers, plus the Airlines, that USPS contracts with to move the mail, and the costs are not much different. By the way, I don't work for the USPS.

Here's an idea... how about the Postal Service suck up and enjoy the same COLA freeze that the rest of the Federal employee workforce are being forced to take?
Also, how about having the Postal Service pay a bigger chunk of their own health insurance premiums, just like the rest of the Federal employee workforce? That's another perk they can afford to lose.
What about firing Postal Service employees who repeatedly make wrong deliveries of prescription drugs, checks, even credit cards, etc? I've seen the same repeat mistakes over and over again getting other people's mail. And the same mail carrier keeps the job.

Sure it's easy to bash the USPS employees for getting COLA increases, but do you realize that COLA increases have amounted for ZERO increase in postal salaries over the past 2 1/2 years? COLA increases, in postal crontracts, are based on the CPI index of January 2006. Because the CPI dropped so far during the recession, the semi-annual CPI calculation has not regained its Jan 06 level which means a COLA increase of zero.
Also - when you compare postal workers to "other federal workers" keep in mind that the annual salary increase for postal workers ranges from 1% to 1.3%. "Other" Federal Workers get yearly increases in the range of 3% - 5% which is more than double what postal workers get. If you want postal workers to give up COLA, then start giving them the same raises that other feds get.
Everyone is quick to blame the postal worker for the problem. they are just regular people working hard every day. The waste and inefficiency is caused by a management mindset focused more on cutting service than inproving service. The letter carrier does not decide to spend $2.5 billion on new flat sorters when flat volume is declining. The clerk does not decide to give mailers a 10-cent discount for presort work that could be done in-house for 2 cents. It's easy to blame the front line employee because that's who you see every day, but realize they are just as frustrated as you.

Ok, lets put on both pair of shoes: On the mngt side we really need to do something to get the USPS back on track, ie... cuting cost like reducing the work force, raising the cost of stamps, cuting out a day of delivey, closing post offices with overheads that out weight that revenue.
Now lets look at the other side: unions was created because mngt was abusing labour, the cost of mngt errors with labour is very very costly, like hudreds of millions of dollars.
How about mailing items, the people that supports us, our costomer, has to pay for the bulk of the severice, at $.44 A LETTER, while bulk mail(junk mail) pays as little as $.09 or less for items five times the letter size, whats wrong with this picture???
Reducing the work force: of the 250,000 over 69% of that was labour, which by the way only makes about 2/3s what mngt make. Which by the way is still less than UPS, fedex and Ground labour employees make. Maybe mngt should learn how to manage/////
Cuting out a day of delivery, have you ever seen the DPS on the day after the holiday, The amount is so steep that the average carrier can't deliver it all in 8 hours, therfore going into overtime.
The labour force is so small now that penaty overtime is paid out everyday, while fyou have mngt steping on each other feet, they don't even know what the other one is doin, so therefore several different rule apply in each office, come on guys lets get it together, PLEASE.

I wish that the postal "powers that be" would read these comments. Otherwise, how will they know what the actual users of the post office think. I believe the bulk mail is one of the biggest culprits for the post office losing money. Granted, they ship a lot of mail. However, the prices they pay are ridiculously low. Even if the prices were increased by a substantial amount, I doubt that the bulk mailers would quit mailing out their "junk". Most of the mail I receive is delivered on a Friday and/or a Saturday. It was probably mailed on Monday through Wednesday. So, what day would the post office select for no delivery? Postal workers also need to start paying more for their health insurance.

The PMG is full of malarkey. He is trying to blow smoke up the butt of America. The sad fact of the matter is that, internally, the USPS pisses away millions of dollars every year on stupidity. Cutting delivery from 6 days to 5 days will impact rural America in a very negative way. If the PMG is truly serious about service to America as per Federal Law (U.S. Code Title 39), then he will focus on eliminating the top-heavy portion of the USPS, beginning with the VP of sustainability and support staff, and moving on down through all Area and District higher management positions, which do little but create repetitive reports to be filed.